


Impossible Sky

by aussiebee



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Cowboy Derek Hale, Emotional Hurt, Location: Montana, M/M, Post-Nogitsune, Slow Build, Some Plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-20
Updated: 2018-10-20
Packaged: 2019-08-04 19:15:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16352600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aussiebee/pseuds/aussiebee
Summary: Fleeing Beacon Hills after the Nogitsune is finally taken care of, Stiles makes his way to Montana's Lone Wolf Ranch. Somehow, once there, he manages to find himself again.That's not all he finds.





	Impossible Sky

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Delightful_I_Am](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Delightful_I_Am/gifts).



> So, the prompt I got from @im-a-frickin-delight on Tumblr: 
> 
> _How do you feel about putting our boys in a country setting? Think post-nogitsune Stiles leaving BH and finding Derek on a farm in the middle of buttfuck nowhere completely by accident. Remember those pics of Hoechlin in a field?_
> 
> Well. This had a little more angst than anticipated, but we all know how I feel about happy endings.
> 
>  
> 
> Heh.

He’s weary and heartsore by the time he reaches Montana, but there’s something about the way the sign for the Lone Wolf Ranch glows in the golden late afternoon light that has Stiles pulling over to the side of the road.

*

They offer him a job on the spot, Camille’s grey eyes knowing and sad when she walks out to meet him as he pulls up outside the farmhouse. She asks what he can do, and when he shrugs and mumbles that he might not be real good with the heavy lifting, but he’s not too bad with computers, her whole face lights up. She’s about as old as Dad, and looks almost twice as tough, but that smile makes Stiles fall a little in love with her.

*

He settles easily, and for the first couple of days the ranch kids are his only real companions. Mattie and Jack, twins and trouble, hammer him with questions. It’s more talk than he’s heard in weeks and he collapses into bed early the first few nights he’s there.

Slowly, though, the cooling plains air begins to revitalise him, and by the end of the first week he feels more at home than he has in years in Beacon Hills. The golden grass plains, lavender mountains with their whipped white clouds, and breathtakingly crystalline skies give him something to look forward to every day.

It’s been a long time since he’s felt that, too.

*

He doesn’t know what wakes him before dawn on his twelfth day at Lone Wolf. The air making its way in through his perpetually-open window is sharp and clean, with just the faintest hint of woodsmoke. All is quiet. But Stiles is awake, now, and it’s no small thing to have time to oneself in a place like this.

He gets up and gets dressed, carries his boots in his hand so as not to wake anyone else as he makes his way down the hall and to the kitchen. There’s no one in there, but the lights of the rangehood are on and the coffee is freshly brewed when he places his hand on the pot to check. He pours himself a cup, slips his boots on in the mudroom, grabs his fleece-lined oilskin jacket and lets himself outside.

It’s two days past the new moon and black as pitch outside. Stiles automatically orients himself southwesterly, drawn by the Nemeton’s malignant power even here. There’s fog today, unusual this far east of the Continental Divide, and the way it muffles sound makes Stiles uneasy. The Nemeton feels hungry, and its pull makes Stiles ache.

The sensation of something brushing past his leg has his heart leaping, though he doesn’t make a sound. He exhales sharply when he sees Kit, the ranch’s enormous mottled-grey ratter twisting sinuously between his ankles, luminous green eyes staring up at him. Stiles huffs a soundless laugh through his nose and leans down to scratch the cat under his chin.

*

“The cowboys’ll be back tonight,” Camille tells him when he brings her lunch.

They’re sitting side-by-side in the full sun, Camille eating the shepherd’s pie and the two of them sharing a large thermos of unsweetened iced tea.

“Hmm?” Stiles murmured distractedly, watching the heat shimmer in the distance make the ground ripple like water.

“They’ve been mustering for the last couple weeks,” she explains patiently. “And they’ll be back tonight. Usually means a big dinner all together, out on the back lawn.”

“Might go and help Jace in the kitchen today, then?” Stiles asks, knowing he’s done right when Camille rewards him with another of her beaming smiles.

“They’re a pretty good-looking bunch,” she adds as an aside, laughing huskily when he flushes pink. “Might want to dress nice.”

“Put on my cleanest boots, you reckon?”

“I reckon,” she agrees, and kisses him on the cheek when she gets up to go back to work.

*

It’s hot work in the kitchen, and Stiles doesn’t really have the knack for it, but he leaves the fine tuning to Jason and does what he’s told. It’s late afternoon when he hears shouts in the distance and the sound of many hooves approaching the house. Dinner’s still a couple of hours away, so Jason packs a couple of crates with fresh fruit salad, bread rolls stuffed with home-cured ham and rich, creamy cheeses, thick slices of apple pie, bottles of iced tea and paper bags of homemade fudge to take out to the cowboys to hold them over to dinner.

Fifteen year old Carter and twelve year old Mae are pressed into service to help him carry everything outside, and Carter teases Stiles about his still comparatively-pale arms, and the fact that he’s eaten well enough over the last fortnight to gain some mass and regain some muscle tone. Mae tartly informs him that she’s shocked someone that thin can carry so much.

Stiles is laughing as he steps out into the sunlight, momentarily blinded after the darkness of the hallway, and is halfway down the front path when he realises what he’s seeing. There’s a group of cowboys standing along the front fence, laughing and talking and in various stages of undress. They’re dusty, dirty and sweaty, and they’re taking turns sticking their heads under the hose to clean off a little before they tend to their horses.

There’s one, though, a little apart from the others, the one leaning forward with the hose running over his hair that catches Stiles’ eye, shirtless, and with low slung jeans and dusty boots. His skin is tan and his muscles sleek, but when he straightens up, still facing away from the house, Stiles freezes like a deer in headlights. Even without the tattoo he’d recognise that back, the breadth of those shoulders, the shape of the hairline at the nape of the man’s neck, the dimples at the base of his spine.

He assumes it’s his heartbeat that gives him away because he  _ knows _ he’s been rendered utterly dumb, but the cowboy turns and every dream and nightmare Stiles has had for the last eighteen months comes true all at once.

Stiles would recognise those eyes anywhere.

He can’t do this.

*

He doesn’t remember returning to the kitchen, or what he said to Carter when he shoved his crate of food at the boy and made some excuse about going back to help Jace. He doesn’t remember anything but the way Derek’s eyes flicked over him from head to toe, assessing and checking like he always did after an altercation with the supernatural. The way he’d stopped doing after the Nogitsune.

He doesn’t remember finishing the dinner prep or returning to his room, doesn’t remember packing his bag, doesn’t remember anything else after seeing Derek. Unfortunately, he remembers everything else. Remembers Lydia, screaming. Remembers the fluorescent lights of the hospital, flickering. The unholy pulsating glow of the Oni’s eyes. The way Allison’s blood seemed so incredibly vivid against Chris’ palms.

He remembers liking it.

He doesn’t remember making it to the bathroom, but that’s where he wakes up in the morning, so he guesses he must have.

*

Camille gives him two days of sneaking around before she corners him and tells him he has work to do, and frankly, it’s two days more than he was expecting to be allowed. He sequesters himself away in her study where no-one else is allowed to go, ignoring hesitant knocks on the door from the kids, the way Mae passes by the door a couple of times a day musing loudly about sedentary work and muscular atrophy.

He doesn’t see Derek.

*

He doesn’t see Derek until he does.

It’s another unexplained early morning wake-up, and as he creeps down the stairs the only thing he’s thinking of is coffee. He pours himself a mug and is in the process of taking a first sip when he realises he’s not alone, and that someone is sitting at the kitchen table, tucked away in the corner and watching him steadily.

Stiles knows his heart is in his eyes, and knows that it must look broken- and it  _ is- _ because Derek can’t hold his gaze, and eventually looks down at his own hands.

Stiles curls in on himself a little and tries to draw as much warmth from his mug as he can as he turns and leaves the room.

“Stiles,” Derek says softly as he steps through the doorway. “I’m sorry.”

“So am I,” Stiles whispers, but he doesn’t slow as he leaves. He returns to his room and lets out a long breath. That’s done, at least, the ugly, awkward first confrontation. He gets changed, and as he does he realises he’s not sure what, exactly, either of them were apologising for.

The day passes uneventfully, and Stiles knows he can’t put it off any longer. He joins the household for dinner, arriving a little late and with his laptop in hand to show Camille what he’s done. He’s been designing a website for the ranch, to tie in with plans to open it up to the public as something of a dude ranch with a lean towards education on sustainable agriculture. He thinks he’s done the bare bones, enough to show Camille and get her opinion, but she just laughs and takes the silver laptop from him, putting it safely on top of the fridge.

“Eat first,” she tells him, “then I’ll take a look.”

He sits in his usual spot, halfway down the table with his back to the pantry, and tries not to look at Derek, sitting towards the end of the table with Millie and Jakey on his lap, murmuring quietly to them as they tell him about their day. They chatter excitedly and steal food from his plate, and he lets them with a smile.

He glances up, stares directly at Stiles as though he can feel the weight of his gaze, and manages a tiny self-deprecating shrug. He doesn’t know why, but Stiles feels himself blush, even as he can’t look away. Derek and kids? That’s something he never knew he needed to see.

Tearing his eyes away and focussing on his dinner, Stiles eats methodically, not tasting much of anything. The meal passes uneventfully, but for Camille looking thoughtfully between the two of them, and Stiles knows he’s in for a chat about it, probably sooner than later. He talks with Liam about a science project coming up that he has promised to help with, and asks Annie how she’s feeling now that her first trimester morning sickness has finally abated. It’s nice, and it feels like family.

Stiles helps clean up, helps Jace with prep for tomorrow’s breakfast, and when he’s done his head is clear and he’s feeling okay. Then he takes some scraps outside for Maggie, Jace’s old labrador who enjoys her retirement in patches of sunlight beneath the massive cedars in the southwest corner of the yard, and there is Derek.

He gets to his feet from the stone bench he’s been waiting on, Maggie gazing adoringly up at him as he wipes his hands clean of hair and drool on the seat of his jeans. He looks oddly shy, hesitant in a way that Stiles isn’t familiar with, and he doesn’t seem to know what to so with his hands.

“Mags,” Stiles says, tearing his eyes from Derek and crouching down. Maggie hauls herself up onto all fours and makes her way over to him, her tail wagging happily. “Hi, baby girl,” he murmurs, like always, scratching her behind the ears as he gives her a meaty ham hock to take away and savour.

They watch her go in silence, neither of them moving, until Stiles highs silently and crosses the path to sit down next to Derek.

*

“The Lone Wolf?” Stiles asks eventually.

Derek’s surprised huff of laughter feels nice where it brushes against Stiles’ forearm. “Where else could I be sure you’d be able to find me?”

*

It’s not so strained after that. They start spending time together. Derek comes and sits in the study, reading while Stiles works and Camille pretends not to notice, and Stiles sits on the tailgate of the communal pickup and chats as Derek grooms horses, mends fences and tends to the livestock. They don’t talk about Beacon Hills, and they don’t mention their mutual friends, but there’s healing happening as they relearn and redefine their relationship, and it’s enough.

They’re together one afternoon, far down the southern paddock where Derek has been sent to count the calves. The afternoon is sultry, massive anvil-shaped cumulonimbus grow and build upon themselves until they’re giants in an impossible sky. They’re lying close together on a picnic blanket Derek found beneath the back seat, Stiles trying to confound Derek with the scientific names of all the animals he can supposedly see. Derek knows them all, because Stiles has discovered he’s even more of a nerd than originally suspected.

“Look,” he says, pointing at the cloud, “an  _ Aha ha!” _

“That’s not a wasp, it’s clearly an  _ Agra vation,” _ Derek replies, and he sounds so scornful that Stiles can’t help but laugh, but it ends on a yelp when a huge crack of thunder and an electric purple flash rend the sky.

“Guess that’s us,” Derek says, getting to his feet and hauling Stiles to his. They both duck involuntarily as another sudden rumble sounds from right on top of them, and they bolt for the truck as fat, stinging drops of rain begin to fall.

They return to the ranch and Derek parks in the barn, making sure to secure the doors as the wind begins to strengthen. Neither of them are wet, but the energy in the air and zipping between them is almost as electric as the storm outside, and Stiles feels more jittery than he has in a really long time. He sits on the wide plank barn swing and lets Derek push him for a while, neither of them speaking much but both of them content to be there. The odd greenish light of the storm adds an unreality to the afternoon, and Derek finally catches Stiles mid swing, biceps flexing as he braces to take Stiles’ weight and inertia.

“I’m glad you’re here,” he says eventually, his eyes studying Stiles’ face intently. “I missed you so much.” Then he leans forwards and presses his mouth to Stiles’, eyes still open, and kisses him and kisses him and kisses him.

It feels like healing.

*

By the time summer ends, Stiles is brown as a berry and corded with muscle. Derek whistles at him one day as he climbs out of the creek, soaking wet and dragging Mae after him, and they disappear for a few hours, reappearing in time for the evening feed heavy-eyed and loose-limbed. Camille tsks at them and scolds them for wasting the afternoon, but Derek just kisses her cheek and tells her it wasn’t a waste, tipping his hat to her when he pulls it on and vaults the yard fence to get to work.

“Showoff,” Stiles mutters.

“Like you mind,” Camille teases, and she’s right, of course; he doesn’t.

*

The nightmares fade as autumn cools to winter, and Stiles grows comfortable in his skin again. Derek thinks it’s because he’s changed himself physically, with hard work and time spent outside. He thinks maybe it’s a reclaiming, subconsciously done, but reclamation all the same. Stiles agrees, but he privately thinks it’s more to do with the way he’s changed himself inside, the way he’s deliberately made room in his heart for Derek, and the way he’s changed his capacity for love.


End file.
